The Disappearance of Ben Solo
by wandering.scavenger
Summary: He had no memories, no name but the one he woke up to: Ben Solo. They would never know what it meant to fear the name he once went by, never gasp in pain at the feel of his lightsaber through their chests, never fear him. The world he knew no longer existed, in here he was everything he should have been. But there is someone missing, along with the scar that marked him as hers.


Chapter One

 _The concept of time had been lost to him since he was a child. There was no such thing as time when one was engulfed in darkness._

 _Darkness—it was a state that he had been in since he was a child, perhaps even when he was an infant, still in his early stages of grasping the first level of human consciousness. What then was time? It was a sentimental notion, the idea that every action and word was meant to be accomplished and said when it was intended to. Time allowed its user to manage his activities in an organised manner, it allowed him to decide when to rest and when to work, and it also gave man the idea that it was a valuable thing that was not meant to be taken lightly._

 _A foolish thing really, for time only hindered those who were bound to it. It imprisoned men in a gilded cage of fear, fear of what would become of them when their time would finally run out. There was a belief that time was linear, constantly moving forward in a speed as ruthless as light itself. But he had no fear of what would become of him once his time would run its course, it never occurred to him that he would be anything more than a vessel for the Darkness to take, and he was satisfied with the great possibility that it was his only purpose. Perhaps he would seem insignificant to those who desired greatness, but he saw a much larger picture._

 _He saw the rise of the First Order, an Empire of Darkness that would rule the galaxy and bring with it a new age of enlightenment. There was no need for time in Darkness, for it led one to a much greater cause than one's own short-lived life._

 ** _He saw balance._**

* * *

He woke up in a bed, soft and warm, quite unlike any that he'd had the comfort of laying in for over a decade. He tried to sit up, suddenly taken aback by the weakness of his body when his arms collapsed, throwing his head back against the pillows. Where was he? What was happening? A feeling of drowsiness overcame him, his eyes fought to stay wide open.

"Ben!"  
A voice, so loud and so filled with joy and so _familiar_. His eyes flew up in an instant, and they came in contact with wide brown ones that brimmed with tears at their corners. The woman raised her hand to his face, brushing her aged fingers against his cheek. He was suddenly taken back to a time when he felt a larger, more callused hand caressed his face. It took no more than a second for him to react in defence, his power immediately sending the woman flying against the wall. His heart was pounding, he could hear it himself, and he wondered if she could hear it too. She stared at him; arms pinned to the wall, her were eyes filled with nothing but forgiveness and love. Hatred burned in his chest, but something else stirred inside of him.

' _Calm down. You're safe, you're with me._ ' there it is again, her voice—it's in his head this time, pleading for him; it's almost as soothing as her touch.

"Get out of my head." he hissed; his throat was dry, as though he hadn't spoken for months. His own voice sounded unused and out of practice, a strange jumble of words that spilled out of his parched mouth. He thought of his last memory prior to waking up, but his mind was a mess of different images that couldn't be strung together in cohesion. Everything went blank before he managed to take notice of the person whose fist connected with his face, the dull ache of the pain throbbed in his head as he lay still once again.

 _Ben_.

It had been some time since he had last heard someone address him in a such a way; why he thought so, he couldn't say. The name sounded as foreign as the one he took on—the one that he couldn't remember. A prisoner in his own unconscious body, he wanted to laugh, whether it was out of despair or a twisted sense of humour, he wasn't sure. He was engulfed in darkness, a sensation that strangely wasn't particularly unusual to him. When he would wake, he would repay the stranger for the damage that had been done to him. There were thoughts and images that were familiar to him, and yet he was completely unable to explain how they were of any significance when he tried to find meaning in them.

Who was he?

The gentle feeling of fingers brushing against his skin returned, his body seemed to melt at the touch, yearning for the tenderness that it leant him. He opened his eyes once more, letting out a sigh at the realisation that it was the elderly woman once again—the one he had harmed, Leia Organa. To his surprise, his heart beat steadily with the knowledge that he was in the hands of the strange woman, what was more surprising was that he was not as opposed to her presence as he had been when he initially saw her. She smiled down at him, a tear trickling down her cheek as she bent over and pressed her forehead to his.

"Why are you crying?" he asked, his voice a soft whisper against the hum of the machine that he was attached to. Discomfort grew as he began to get a grip on his consciousness, his body slowly started to scream in pain at the feel of the thin tubes and wires that ran over his arms and torso. Leia Organa pulled away and wiped her wrinkled face, the smile on her lips never wavered in spite of her trembling. She laughed, taking his face into her two hands and kissing his forehead. He might have sent her hurtling to the wall again if he had the strength, but the power of the love that her body exuded was crippling.

"My son has finally returned to me." she replied, smoothing his hair back as he gazed up at her in confusion.

Mother.

His mind reeled at the realisation; he was in the arms of his mother, the woman who bore and nurtured him out of pure love. Leia Organa was his mother, Han Solo was his father. The world was somehow at an imbalance, and he wondered if he was going to pass out again from the blow to the head that he'd taken prior to waking up. All control over his body seemed to disappear, he shook and pulled away from his mother, his face contorted in an expression of disgust.

"Don't call me that." he snapped, a burst of energy enveloped him, the air crackled at the touch of his power. It was familiar, as familiar as the feeling of the darkness that enveloped him in his sleep, more familiar than the worried look that Leia Organa directed at him.

"General—" his eyes looked to the corner of the room, where a man with tanned skin stood, his dark eyes focused solely on Leia Organa's white clad form.

"Stand ground Poe." she replied, cutting the man off before he could complete his words of caution. Poe, he too was familiar. At the back of his mind he searched for a memory linked to the smaller man, only to find that he couldn't summon a single one that explained why he seemed to recognise the stranger. The tan skinned man obeyed, directing an anxious gaze towards him as he remained standing at the corner of the grey room. Leia Organa looked at him as though he was the only proof of her reality, perhaps she could have been the same to him once, but at that moment he had never felt more out of place amidst the whirring machines that he was connected to and the smell of medicine and anti-bacterial solutions. He had never been in this room before, perhaps he had never met the man at the corner either, but what he was most sure of was that he had not seen Leia Organa for a very, very long time.

"What do I call you then, Ben?" she asked, turning away from him to gaze out of the small window to his left. He did not miss the tilt of her head in his direction, it was a tactic that she used on him when she would try to calm the tantrums that he threw as a child. He gritted his teeth, his heart pounding painfully against his chest at the question she posed. It hung about in the rigid air, loud and so uncertain.

"I—I—" he was at a loss, suddenly realising the gravity of the loss of his identity. If he wasn't Ben, who was he? What was his name? Thinking about it again only made him consider that perhaps he wasn't so sure about who he was even before waking up to this strange situation. His troubled thoughts were disrupted by the feel of his bed dipping downward every so slightly to accommodate the shift in weight from his mother's body. She sat next to him, never hesitating to press her hand to his cheek once again.

"You are my son, Ben Solo." she said firmly, her brown eyes boring deep into his as though she had found the flicker of conflict within him and plucked it from his very soul. He said nothing in reply, unable to look her in the eye. Leia Organa gently pushed him down to lie on his back, sending waves of calm throughout his body, he had no way of knowing whether she was using her faint powers of the Force on him or if she simply still had that strange power over him in the way that mothers did over the children they bore. He couldn't tell which possibility made him more uncomfortable.

"I am not tired." he murmured, his eyes wandering over to the window that the elderly woman had initially been staring through. Rays of light flooded through, brightening the cream coloured room. He hadn't seen light in such a peaceful manner for some time now, it was strange how he suddenly didn't find it to be such a horrible thing as he watched dust dance about beneath the sunshine. "I know, but lay still first until the doctor and his attendants come to see how you're doing. If all is well, we'll finally be able to get rid of these accursed machines and move you to better accommodations." she replied, turning to meet the gaze of the tanned stranger at the corner of the room. The man nodded, presumably leaving the room to fetch the medical team for Leia Organa.

"Why am I attached to all these?" he asked, tugging lightly at the tubes that ran through his veins. He could pull them out himself and be assured that he had enough self-mastery to avoid wincing. His companion stared at him with a look of bewilderment, the sound of her heartbeat racing was enough of an indication that she was not only confused, but surprised. "You don't remember anything, Ben?" she asked, her two eyebrows furrowed together, forming a crease in between them. He remembered that look, she first started sending him that look when he discovered that he was Force-sensitive. Tired, he shook his head lightly, having lost the motivation to speak. And then he heard it again, the sound of her heart racing. He wanted to cover his ears and block out the sound, if only to give him some peace for a little while as his mind still worked hard to keep itself from reeling all over again.

"Ben, you've been in a coma for fifteen years."

* * *

let me know what you think!


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